Now before anyone gets upset, it's worth noting BitTorrent is already in the business of legal content distribution. It dabbled in operating a storefront back in 2008 and it's always been a great way to download huge pieces of open source software. This plan goes a bit farther than that though. As Mason told the New York Times, "We've been trying to groom the entertainment industry to think about BitTorrent as a partner."

And it makes sense, BitTorrent has a gigantic user-base, more than Hulu, Netflix, and Spotify combined, times two. And it's an efficient way to download large files, much better than pulling them from a single source. But are all those users there because BitTorrent is great, or because free (pirated) content abounds? BitTorrent is betting on the former.

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According to Mason, these plans don't involve setting up any kind of store or anything. Instead, BitTorrent simply wants to reach out to rightsholders to offer itself up as a delivery mechanism, whether that will mean Torrentable downloads of extra goodies that come with a traditional purchase, or set top boxes that use the protocol to download and stream. BitTorrent's certainly got a bad rap considering its method is so efficient and its name is something of a dirty word. Whether this push can do anything to change that remains to be seen. Hopefully it can. [The New York Times]